Take My Hymn and Let it Be

﻿Somebody needs to reign in Christian songwriters. Particularly when it comes to “worship” music, they’re out of control. I know, complaining about the music sung in church is taboo, terribly worn, the surest proof that the complainer is focused on self and not true worship. But just hear me out. If you want to brand me a malcontent and a pot-stirrer thereafter, go ahead.If you attend an evangelical church in America, you can likely relate to the following scenario: The worship band begins playing a familiar tune, while familiar words appear on the screen, and you start singing an oldie but a goodie. And then, about a third of the way through, the vocalist freestyles a little bit and before you know it you’re singing unfamiliar words to an unfamiliar tune (or not singing, for obvious reasons). It only lasts a little while, and then it’s back to the oldie-goodie.Okay, no biggie, no worries.But then it happens again.And again.And again.And then, before you know it, even the familiar tunes of the oldies-but-goodies aren’t quite so familiar. They’re just a little different. Or the familiar lyrics have been reworded to make them more politically correct and modern. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” has become “May God Give Peace to You Happy People of Unspecified Gender.”And if you’re like me, maybe not the most musically adept person on the earth, someone who grew up on these classic songs of the faith and who cherishes their doctrinal soundness, you become a little frustrated. Why can’t we sing the song to the tune I know? Why can’t we sing it with the original words? Why must everything change?Now this is the point in time where disgruntled people such as me are reminded that our worship is about God, not us, and as much as we cherish the old hymns, members of the younger generation just can’t “get” with the old fogey music and need to worship God in their own way, and that we should seek unity in the body instead of sowing seeds of discord, and several other such points that generally shame into submission anyone who dares speak up about music.Fair arguments all. The focus should be on God, not on personal preference. But when I get caught between the old tune and the new tune and can no longer discern the tune, we’ve sort of lost the point of corporate singing (as opposed to corporate recitation). And I urge you to look at some of these altered hymns—the new portions don’t exactly contain groundbreaking theology, so how specifically is the young crowd benefitting from these revisions as compared to the hymns as originally written? And at the risk of plowing ground on the discord farm, why can’t we be unified with the old tune instead of the slightly modified new tune?So I come back to all the Christian songwriters and artists out there, the ones who take old hymns and tweak a few notes, change a couple of words, and add a bridge or two. Stop it. Just stop. Have some creativity. You are, after all, artists, aren’t you? I mean, you don’t see authors taking a classic like To Kill a Mockingbird and renaming Atticus and Scout, changing the setting of a few scenes, penning an epilogue, and republishing it as their own, do you? So why is this practice so prevalent with songwriters and singers?I’m not complaining about all new music, although much of it isn’t my style (another post for another day). I’m just saying, have an original thought. Write your own song, with your own words, to your own tune. If it’s good, we’ll sing it in church. But leave the old hymns and choruses alone. And we’ll sing some of them too. Is that too much to ask?To put it another way:Take my hymn and let it be.
Stop this mad revising spree.
Take my hymn and let it shine.
The old version is just fine.
The old version is just fine.Leave these words just as they are,
Your new bridge is a bridge too far.
Leave this tune, don’t change a note.
Why rewrite what another wrote?
Why rewrite what another wrote?I write this with my tongue, to a degree, planted in my cheek. But I also write it with serious tones (pun intended) of sincerity. I’m not picking on any particular church or worship leader, because I’ve seen this same pattern play out in almost every church I’ve been to. My complaint is more with the people writing these songs (if you can call what they do writing). Again, please, stop.Perhaps I’m out of line to complain. Maybe I need to check my attitude and readjust my focus. It’s possible this is really just a case of potato/po-tah-to and I’m blowing it out of proportion (while blowing off steam). These are all things I’m seeking to be cognizant of, because it could be that I’m just a malcontent after all. But for the love of A.B. Simpson, Fanny Crosby, and the brothers Wesley, can those of you who write music for a living please just leave a few of these sacred hymns alone?A-men.﻿

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I'm a thinker. For better or worse, my mind is always running. As a writer, I also love the method of communication. I think there's an artistry to it. This blog is my way of giving my constant thinking a place to express itself artistically.